Blog Archives

Guest post

by Jeffrey Cleaver

Director of Silver Pear Weddings, Oxfordshire

How does a bride cope with the strain of planning a wedding, managing (inevitable) family debates whilst organising a raft of suppliers and striving to keep herself (and her groom) sane in the process?

Some of the answers are probably glaringly obvious but here, guest post writer for Guides for Brides and Director of Silver Pear Weddings in Oxfordshire, Jeffrey Cleaver, is only too aware of the stresses a bride encounters and has developed a hot list of tips based on years of experience.

“Be organised – create spreadsheets to manage costs; have an indexed lever-arch file for quotes and correspondence with plastic wallets for fabric swatches and copies of wedding stationery; consider creating a scrap-book of wedding images/ ideas – it’ll help evolve and fine-tune your style and guide suppliers (like florists) to an instant idea of ‘you’.

“Be as considerate and polite as you can with suppliers – it may sound obvious but courtesies like “please” and “thank you” are still ‘magic words’.Read More

Guest post

by Jeffrey Cleaver

Director of Silver Pear Weddings, Oxfordshire

Swapping a London-based career in Interior Design for a move to the country and the decision to host weddings, more than ten years ago now, we thought the two or three we might host each year would be a pleasure and a way to regenerate the house and grounds.

Because we didn’t have the experience or the contacts or the budget for anything much of our own we offered the grounds and barn at Friars Court as a ‘blank canvas’. More by accident than design that approach carved a unique niche for us; since then we’ve discovered the significant demand from couples eager to have something ‘different’, something that’s personal to them.

For a bride, a ‘blank canvas’ allows her a greater degree of autonomy and freedom but that freedom is no “free lunch”: it means liaising with each and every supplier rather than purely with the clip-board-wielding event manager of an in-house team. So coordinating several suppliers equals work, time but, hopefully, not too much added stress. We’ve built up a really lovely group of suppliers over the years, most of them have now all worked together on the same weddings (some have even had their own weddings here) so there is more of a ‘team spirit’ which should help the wedding almost, as one bride put it, plan itself.Read More